Google Play Store Fixes Download Size and Progress Bar

Google has been tinkering with the Google Play Store behind the scenes and that has lead to the addressing of two annoying and sometimes confusing issues. The company is rolling out an update that fixes the download size indicator when you are viewing an app’s details and the download progress bar when you download the update. So what’s the big deal here? For some, this will be a no big deal but for others, this was a real annoyance. The first issue was on the update size for an app you have installed. Before now, the Google Play Store would show only the full size of the download. Unless it is a comprehensive redo of an app, an OTA update is usually a fraction of that size. So take Gmail for example. The app itself is 40MB and the latest update was only about 6MB. Before this update, you would see the update size as 40MB, not 6MB, so it would lead people to believe that these update were taking up a huge amount of space on their devices. The reality is that it wasn’t but this not-so-clear download size didn’t help matters.

Coupled with this fix of the download size is the download progress bar when you are downloading an update. Before this update, when your download got to the size of the update (think about

OTA Download Size for Google Play Store AppsProgress Bar Accurate for Downloads from Google Play Store

my 6MB update to Gmail), the progress bar would just quit and move to “installing”. For some users, this was really confusing. Did the download actually download? Did it download all the way? What is really being installed if it failed? Again, for seasoned Android users, this is likely a no big deal. For new users however (and there are a lot of them), this could be really confusing.

This has been fixed now and the progress bar shows the proper download size and completes the bar before the “installing” text is seen.

The good news is that all of these fixes are happening behind the scenes. There is nothing for you as a user to download and the next time you get an update, you should start seeing the correct information. Note though that it may take a few days before everyone sees this improvement.